SEARCHING, FINDING,
AND THE CATHOLIC HISTORY OF TEXAS

PHILIP GLEASON^{*}
©Copyright 1990, Texas Catholic Historical Society.
May not be reproduced electronically or mechanically without permission of Catholic Southwest.

A number of years ago, I came across a passage from St. Augustine that seemed to me an ideal motto for a historian. Although I tacked it up before my desk and have always found it a source of inspiration, I have been delinquent in failing to share it with others. This occasion seems appropriate for repairing that omission. I 'wish, therefore, to recommend to the promoters of this journal, and to all those who will fill its pages in the future, these words of the great African saint and father of the Church: "Let our search then be such that we can be sure of finding, and let our finding be such that we go on searching."

Augustine did not have history in mind when he wrote those lines. They occur, rather, in his treatise on the mystery of the Trinity; but the idea expressed is highly relevant to history. For as H.I. Marrou explains in quoting this passage, Augustine thought of the "mysteries" of faith as inexhaustible depths of spiritual richness, through which the soul could advance endlessly "from light to light, never arriving at its goal, but never ceasing to acquire more light."^{1}

We historians, of course, work on a different level and make no claim to penetrate the mysteries of faith. But with searching and finding, and continuing to search, we are familiar enough. At times we do indeed "acquire more light;' and those of us interested in religious history deal with mysteries not unrelated to faith. By analogy, then, St. Augustine does speak to us, and I believe we ought to take his words to heart.

Taking them to hean in this context means, first of all, receiving them as a blessing. I am not so presumptuous as to commission myself to bless the undertaking represented by this journal, but I can and do express the hopes and prayers for its success shared by all who are devoted to the study of American Catholic history. The undertaking is an ambitious one; bringing it this far has, no doubt, been difficult, and further difficulties surely wait in the future. May those responsible for carrying it forward find consolation and renewed commitment from meditating on St. Augustine's words.

Taking these lines to heart also implies reflecting on what searching and finding, and continuing to do so endlessly, means for historians of American Catholicism.

More particularly, we ought just now to reflect on how the project of the Texas Catholic Historical Society fits into the larger history of the Church in this country. Since historians prefer to reflect historically, you will not be surprised to learn that is what I intend to do in the pages that follow. By way of getting into the subject, let us quickly review the history of Catholic historical organizations in the United States.

Catholic Historical Societies
The founding of the first Catholic historical societies was part of the great organizational efflorescence that took place in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The two oldest--the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia and the United States Catholic Historical Society (New York), both of which still exist--were organized in the same year as the American Historical Association, 1884. The Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, which also met that year, and Pope Leo XIII's opening of the Vatican Archives the previous year, helped to generate interest in the history of the American Church.^{2}

Both of these pioneering Catholic societies devoted themselves to collecting and preserving materials, as well as to issuing publications. The collections of the Philadelphia group are especially noteworthy, and its Records, now nearing its one hundredth volume, is the oldest continuing American Catholic historical publication.^{3} The first great historian of American Catholicism, John Gilmary Shea, was one of the organizers of the New York group and edited its first journal, the United States Catholic Historical Magazine. After Shea's death in 1892, the magazine ceased publication and the society was inactive for some time. New York's Archbishop Michael Augustine Corrigan, who (like his great antagonist in the controversies of the era, Archbishop of St. Paul John Ireland) had a deep interest in history, helped to revive the United States Catholic Historical Society at the turn of the century. A new publication, Historical Records and Studies, appeared annually from 1899 to 1964, and the society also published more irregularly a valuable series of monographs. Its most recent publication, U.S. Catholic Historian, was launched in 1980, and the distinguished scholar, Christopher J. Kauffman, became its editor three years later.^{4}

As their titles indicate, both the Philadelphia and the New York societies were national in scope and intention. Yet they were at the same time local bodies with a strong interest in the Catholic history of their regions. Several other local Catholic groups flourished briefly along the East Coast in the same era--a Long Island-Brooklyn society in the 1890s; the New England Catholic Historical Society in the first decade of the new century, and a group devoted to the Catholic history of Maine in the second.

The first of the major "western" societies was founded in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1905. Archbishop Ireland, who had earlier taken part in the founding of the United States Catholic Historical Society, was the chief promoter of the local group in his see city. He also wrote a biography of the first bishop of St. Paul, Joseph Cretin, which appeared serially in several volumes of the society's journal, Acta

et Dicta. The founding days of the Church in the upper Mississippi Valley were still a living memory for persons of Ireland's generation, and he spoke for many of those associated with these early societies in saying: "We must hurry to gather and to write, if much of the sweetest and the best of our history is not to escape from us forever. . . - The Catholic Historical Society of St. Paul has not been founded a day too soon."^{5}

Two other western societies hegan in the second decade of the present century. In 1917, the St. Louis Catholic Historical Society was formed on the initiative of Archbishop John J. Glennon, who was looking toward the centennial of the diocese to be celebrated the following year. Historically minded German Catholic priests like F. 0. Holweck and John Rothensteiner were active in this body, and a layman, Frederick P. Kenkel, who edited Central-Blatt and Social Justice, began publishing historical articles in that journal the same year--an innovation that could well have been related to the aspersions cast on German-American loyalty in the "anti-Hun" hysteria of World War I. The new society's St. Louis Catholic Historical Review published a number of valuable documents in its brief life (1918-1923), including some highly relevant to the background of American Catholic missionary activity in Texas.

Much longer-lived was the Illinois Catholic Historical Society, founded in 1918 at the suggestion of Frederic Siedenburg, S.L, of Loyola University. Siedenburg, who was a member of the state commission planning the centenary observance of Illinois's admission to the union, believed Catholics needed to organize in order to make better known the role of their church in the history of the state. The Illinois Catholic Historical Society promptly launched its own Review, the name of which was changed in 1929 to Mid-America. This journal, sponsored by Loyola University, still exists, but it has long since expanded its scope from Catholic history to general American history.

On the last day of December 1919 Peter Guilday presided over the organization of the American Catholic Historical Association. It differed in several respects from the organizations discussed so far. For one thing, it included all of Catholic history in its purview, not just that relating to the United States. It was definitely national in scope and membership, rather than regional. The fact that its founding occurred within the context of the annual meeting of the American Historical Association pointed to its most important difference from the previous societies--the ACHA was to be an organization of professionals, rather than of amateurs, as those terms are understood by students of historiography in the United States.^{6} Guilday, who brought the ACHA into existence and guided its early years, was also the person who established the history of American Catholicism as an academic specialty by setting up a graduate program in American church history at the Catholic University of America.^{7} While many academic historians have been associated with the regional societies--and nonacademics with the ACHA, for that matter--the ACHA became the professional organization of college, university, and seminary professors interested in the history of American Catholicism.

Despite the strongly professional orientation of the ACHA, its founding was

also affected by more popular movements of thought and feeling associated with World War I. Guilday was very much involved in the mobilization of Catholic war work--in documenting the Catholic service record, for example--and his experience probably reinforced his desire to organize historical work nationally. He was clearly affected by the heightened nationalism and patriotism that accompanied the wan Soon after the war Catholics found it necessary to defend their civic loyalty against the attacks of the Ku Klux Klan and other nativists. When that happened, Guilday appealed to history to establish the pedigree of Catholic Americanism. John Gilmary Shea had done the same thing long before, and it seems reasonable to hypothesize that Guilday believed a national Catholic historical association would contribute to proving the Americanism of Catholics.^{8}

The patriotic, or American-roots, angle was definitely involved in the historical work sponsored by the Knights of Columbus in the early l920s.^{9} Although the Knights patronized historical work on a national level, the project most pertinent in this context-and most consequential in historiographical terms--was the creation in 1923 of a historical commission by the Texas branch. As readers of this journal well know, the Knights' initiative led to the formation three years later of the Texas Catholic Historical Society and ultimately to the publication of the series, Our Catholic Heritage in Texas. In bringing this series into being, the Texas Catholic Historical Society accomplished much more than other state societies founded by Catholics in the interwar years had achieved.^{10}

After World War II, the great expansion of higher education allowed the academically oriented ACHA to prosper moderately, but only the better established of the regional groups were able to keep going and there was little new activity. Since the mid-1970s, however, there has been a notable revival of historical interest and activity among American Catholics. The winter 1983 issue of the U.S. Catholic Historian contains articles describing five new Catholic historical projects, and James J. Mahoney, the executive secretary of the revivified United States Catholic Society offers a number of insightful comments on the whole phenomenon.^{11} Still other projects have gotten under way since then. Thus a recent (fall 1988) issue of the American Catholic Studies Newsletter, put out by the Cushwa Center at the University of Notre Dame, reported that the Archdiocese of Seattle had formed a historical society and that the recently organized (and much needed) "Conference on the History of Women Religious" was scheduled to meet for the purpose of planning "an agenda for the future."

Even this very sketchy review of the record indicates that the effort to organize Catholic historical energies in this country has a considerable history of its own. It likewise identifies certain common features in a number of these enterprises--for example, the interest most of them exhibited in collecting and preserving historical materials, as well as in publishing documents and historical articles in journals specifically founded for that purpose. The record also shows that these societies did not enjoy uniform success in their efforts. On the contrary, quite a few passed off the scene after a relatively short active life. A closer study of the history of the more successful groups might well assist the Texas Catholic Historical

Society in preparing to meet the kinds of problems that it Will no doubt encounter in the future.

Instead of following that line of inquiry, however, I want to return to the question hinted at earlier, a question particularly relevant for a regional society just launching its own journal: How does the history which is the particular focus of such a society fit into the larger story of American Catholicism?

It would be interesting to know whether the founders of earlier regional journals confronted that question self-consciously and, if they did, what their conclusions were. No matter what they may have thought about it, their ideas would not necessarily be applicable to the situation of the Journal of Texas Catholic History and Culture. True, the basic problem--the relation of the part to the whole--remains the same, but so many other things have changed that we need to rethink the problem anew in this time and place.

One way of explaining why such a rethinking is necessary would be to say that we are presently groping our way toward a new conceptualization of American Catholic history, a new understanding of its main lines. This more general reorientation of historical understanding will inevitably manifest itself in the thinking and writing of those associated with the Texas Catholic Historical Society, and those who have the good of the society and its projects at heart should strive to be as alert as possible to what is going on.

Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to get a satisfactory grip on what is going on. Changes of this sort are inherently elusive and are particularly obscure while they are still in full flood, as is the case today. For this reason, no one can speak with absolute confidence about the meaning of contemporary shifts in American Catholic historical thought. Once again, it will be helpful to approach the problem historically. We can, I think, get a better fix on the changes of our own time by reviewing the way leading historians of earlier generations have organized the overall story of American Catholicism. Having made such a review, we will be better situated to deal with the implications of present thinking for the endeavors of the Texas Catholic Historical Society.

Writing American Catholic History: Shea to the Second Vatican Council
John Gilmary Shea, whom we have already met as an organizer of the United States Catholic Historical Society, is, of course, better known as the author of the first major history of American Catholicism.^{12} His four-volume History of the Catholic Church in the United States(1886-1892) carried the story from "the first attempted colonization" to the meeting of the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1866. It was solidly based on original documents and its richness of organizational detail has never been surpassed for the period covered. Yet the organizational detail is, from another perspective, the greatest weakness of Shea's history, for, especially in volumes three and four, the reader is swamped by information about diocesan developments that are repeated endlessly with no narrative or conceptual structure to give them coherence other than the geographic and institutional growth of the ecclesiastical jurisdictions themselves.

Shea was certainly able to write narrative and to organize exposition under an overarching theme. His Child's History of the United States (1872) had a strong story line, and many of the forty-nine essays he contributed to the American Catholic Quarterly Review packed a powerful polemical punch. Rather, as Henry Warner Bowden has shown, Shea organized his general history as he did because the geographic-institutional approach accommodated his documentary method and at the same time accorded with his understanding of the nature of the Church. In other words, Shea moved from diocesan account to diocesan account because "he viewed the Church as coterminous with the duly consecrated hierarchy and activities sanctioned by them." By describing the development of ecclesiastical jurisdictions on the basis of original documents, Shea was, as he saw it, writing the essential history of the Church and at the same time following the most scientific method of scholarship.^{13}

Despite Shea's great achievement, the limitations of his approach were only too evident to readers of his work. One reader who gave much thought to those limitations was Peter Guilday, the next great figure in the writing of American Catholic history. Although yielding to no one in his admiration for "the father of American Catholic history," Guilday recognized that Shea's general history was "constructed in an unsatisfactory way" The problem was twofold: Shea's history lacked synthesis, leaving the various "geographical units . . . [standing apart] in spite of all identities and similarities;" and it failed to weave together the Catholic and the national stories, leaving undeveloped "the social and political factors of our national life" that influenced the growth of the Church.^{14}

Guilday proposed to remedy these defects in his own historical work by following a "biographical" approach. "The history of the Catholic Church in any country," he wrote, "is best understood in the lives of its leaders." From this it followed "that at least every bishop should have his biography, since around him and through his haute direction, all work of the diocese centers and develops."^{15} Guilday practiced what he preached by writing two immense episcopal biographies of the life and times type--one of John Carroll, the first American bishop; the other of John England, whom Guilday considered the outstanding bishop of the generation after Carroll. The next stage in what might be called Guilday's "episcopal synthesis" of American Catholic history was to have been a biography of John Hughes, for which he was gathering material when his health broke.^{16}

Although episcopal lives were written long before Guilday's time and would doubtless have continued to flourish without him, his teaching and example contributed to making them the most characteristic form of American Catholic historical writing in the twentieth century. This degree of historiographic concentration on the bishops has been so often criticized that its positive value is in danger of being overlooked. For that reason, we might note that the bishops rightfully deserve close attention because of the essential leadership role they play-or fail to play, for poor leadership can be even more significant in its consequences than good leadership. Moreover, Guilday was correct in thinking that the life of a leading ecclesiastic can serve as an effective synthesizing vehicle for an epoch of Catholic

history. This surmise is particularly true lor the earlier phases of Catholic development, when major responsibility for initiation fails to the bishop. Guilday himself synthesized the earliest phases of national Catholic development through his lives of Carroll and England, but the example of Ellis's Gibbons shows that the biography of a key churchman can effectively illuminate a later and more complex era as well. Finally, as Marvin O'Connell's magnificent life of Archbishop Ireland has demonstrated anew, a gifted biographer's ability to enter the mind of a historic personality and recreate the world in which he or she existed brings us closer to the actualities of the past than any other form of historical writing.^{17}

The chief criticism of episcopal biography as a genre is its narrowness of focus. From the viewpoint of new social history, it is elitist; from that of contemporary ecclesiology, its elitism is related to an inadequate understanding of the nature of the Church. Sensitivity to these problems increased after the Second Vatican Council, but a tacit broadening of historiographic focus may be discerned in the preconciliar work of John Tracy Ellis and Thomas T. McAvoy, C.S.C., both of whom were keenly interested in the interaction between religion and culture as it affected the development of American Catholicism.^{18}

Ellis, who succeeded Guilday as director of graduate work in church history at the Catholic University of America, carried on the series of great episcopal biographies with his magisterial lift of Cardinal Gibbons, the two volumes of which are almost encyclopedic in coverage for the half century and more they embrace.^{19} Though Guilday had not neglected the Americanism of Carroll and England, "Americanization" in its various forms figured so prominently as a controversial issue in the Gibbons era that Ellis had necessarily to deal with it more explicitly as a problem in the adjustment of Catholics to national ideals and institutions. Moreover, he was keenly aware of the role Gibbons played as the symbolic representative and spokesmen for the whole American Church. Thus the very character of Gibbon's episcopal career required Ellis to adopt a broader cultural approach in his biography than Guilday had pioneered.

The sympathy felt by Ellis for Gibbon's liberal and irenic attitude toward non-Catholics, and toward the national culture, was evident throughout the biography, and reflected the author's conviction that Catholics should follow a broadly similar policy in the midtwentieth century. Ellis manifested the same spirit, while at the same time demonstrating unusual ability to bring historical learning to bear on contemporary problems, in a number of essays on topical matters, of which the best known--his critique of American Catholic intellectual lift--was epoch-making in importance.^{20} In all of these ways Ellis nudged Catholic historians toward a more generous and inclusive understanding of their roles and responsibilities.

McAvoy, like Ellis a midwesterner, was only two years older than the latter, although Ellis has survived him by many years. He represented a different institutional center, the University of Notre Dame, where he built up a strong doctoral program in history. Unlike Ellis, McAvoy took his graduate degree from a secular university (Columbia), and in American history rather than church history. These differences, and the fact that Frederick Jackson Turner's "frontier thesis" was

very influential when McAvoy was in graduate school, may perhaps explain why his interest in the relationship between Catholicism and its surrounding cultural milieu was even more self-conscious than that of Ellis.

McAvoy's interest in this relationship manifested itself in an early article on "Americanism and Frontier Catholicism," and in the 1957 book that synthesized the results of his researches on Americanism, The Great Crisis in American Catholic History Even more symptomatic, however, was McAvoy's application of the "minority group" concept to American Catholic history. He began to speak of the "Catholic minority" in the late 1940s and continued to do so until his death in 1969. Although he never discussed the concept itself in a systematic way, his usage revealed an alertness to contemporary social science, for it was not widely employed by commentators on American society until the era of World War.²¹ By its very nature, the minority concept focused attention on the situation of Catholics as one social group in relation to others and on their position in American society generally. This broadening of focus in McAvoy's historical work was paralleled by that of his Notre Dame colleague, the layman, Aaron I. Abell, who made American Catholic endeavors in the field of social service and "social action" his specialty.^{22}

The work of these scholars--and others whom we cannot discuss here-widened the scope of American Catholic history and pointed in directions that would be carried further in the postconciliar era. Despite these adumbrations and despite the continuities in subject matter and approach that tie together preconciliar and postconciliar historiography, it is nevertheless true that the second Vatican Council and the broader cultural upheaval of the 1960s had a powerful effect on the writing of American Catholic history. These historiographical shifts have not, to my knowledge, been explored in depth, and we must be content here with a few rough and ready generalizations--generalizations that will serve (along with what has already been said about earlier approaches) as background for some hints for the future.^{23}

The most important historiographic influence, in my opinion, derives from the coincidence of two shifts: the new ecclesiology in the Catholic world and the new social history in the world of American historical scholarship. By changing our understanding of the nature of the Church, the new ecclesiology requires us to rethink, not merely its internal make-up (e.g., collegiality, the roles of lay persons, priests, etc.), but also the relation of the Church to other religious bodies and to the world more generally. The recent awakening of interest in the history of spirituality can also be linked to the shift in ecclesiological thinking.

The expression "People of God," now the most popular way of designating the Church, has a democratic, antielitist ring suggestive of the affinity between the new ecclesiology and the new social history; for the latter is antielitist on principle and not infrequently marked a reformist, or even radical, spirit highly critical of the social, economic, political, and (among religious historians) ecclesiastical arrangements of the past. Black history, ethnic history, and women's history have all grown rapidly in the past twenty years, and they all reflect, in greater or lesser

degree, both the democratic and the critical dimensions of the new social history.

Both dimensions are likewise present in the work of American Catholic historians, for example in the most recent general synthesis, Jay Dolan's The American Catholic Experience (1985). James Hennesey's general history, American Catholics (1981), also gives special attention to the people who constitute the "Roman Catholic community," but it is not so explicitly a "social history," nor is it as critical of preconciliar American Catholicism as Dolan's book.^{24} Other works exhibiting one facet or another of the postconciliar outlook are too numerous to mention, but the series edited by Christopher Kauffman to mark the bicentennial of the American hierarchy provides a representative (and authoritative) sampling of the newest scholarship.^{25}

So much for our hop, skip, and jump through a century of American Catholic historiography. Letting it serve as our historical orientation, we can now return to the question: What does all this searching and finding and searching again imply for the future work of the Texas Catholic Historical Society and for its new journal? In suggesting some responses to that question, I should add (perhaps unnecessarily, since it is so obvious a point) that my aim is not to prescribe a program but merely to offer some personal reflections for whatever they may be worth.

Searching, Finding, and the Future
First of all, and on the most general level, I would like to see contributors to this journal themselves take up the question of the relation of the part to the whole, exploring from the viewpoint of the local and regional church the interaction between developments on the "micro" and "macro" levels (as our friends in economics might put it). Morton Keller showed in his splendid Affairs of State that the tension between centralizing tendencies and what he called America's "persistent localism" was one of the central themes in American history in the post-Civil War generation.^{26} We can plausibly assume that it is a theme worth exploring in American Catholic history and that changes over time in the relation between macro and micro could tell us a good deal that we do not know about both past and present. The Church's international character and recent discussion of the place of national conferences of bishops in its overall governance, are features of the Catholic situation that would make such studies more complex, but at the same time more potentially interesting and rewarding.

Somewhat related to the theme of national centralizing tendencies is Americanism. As an issue in late nineteenth century Catholic history it has been well worked over. But the interaction of Catholic and American influences is a perennial theme, and there have been some recent indications of a revival of interest in the persistent issue and even talk of what could be called a "new Americanism."^{27} It would be interesting to see how all this looks from the perspective of Texas and the Southwest.

Other facets of the recent history of American Catholicism likewise deserve special attention. Even the Second Vatican Council and the 1960s arc receding into the past (as is painfully impressed upon those who teach undergraduates),

but they have not yet received close study from historians of American Catholicism. We will never be able adequately to understand the changes of that era until we devote far more attention to the immediate "preconciliar" period-American Catholicism in the interwar and post-World War II years. This epoch cries aloud for historical analysis from every part of the country and from a variety of ideological and methodological perspectives. The situation in Texas might he of special interest in view of the economic and demographic changes that have taken place there in recent decades.

Saul Bronder's study of Archbishop Robert E. Lucey's career showed how much we can learn about both preconciliar and conciliar times--in Texas and in the American Church generally--from the much-maligned genre of episcopal biography. While the story of St. Edward's University, recently told by Brother William Dunn, C.S.C., lacks the dramatic conflict that marked the last phase of Lucey's episcopate, it too demonstrates that solid institutional histories have perennial value.^{28}

These examples confirm my very strong conviction that none of the earlier approaches-from Shea's and Guilday's up through Ellis's and McAvoy's--is really "outmoded"! Great history has been written using all these approaches; great history can still be written in their spirit. Obviously, no one would recommend work that is purposely old fashioned or obscurantist in conceptualization or approach. The point, rather, is that no type of history is to be despised in and of itself. Surely we can make room for, welcome, and employ to the fullest, new ways of doing history without discouraging people from applying older approaches to topics that are worth study and that lend themselves to more traditional treatment. This consideration applies with special force to the biography of a bishop like Odin, who played so formative a role in Texas Catholicism and whose story is here previewed for us by Patrick Foley.

As for the opening up of new perspectives since the 1960s, the possibilities are almost endless. Systematic attention to women in American Catholic history-lay women as well as members of religious communities-can hardly be said to have begun. Much more also remains to be done on Catholic education, especially higher education for women; and, aside from studies of nativism, we know little about how Catholics have interacted with their non-Catholic neighbors. The latter might be of special interest in Texas, where Catholics have historically been very much a minority in a distinctive regional culture, where they tried hard in the 1920s and 1930s to get their message across to non-Catholics, and where the diversity of the population has increased so much since then.^{29}

The Hispanic presence, dating back to the earliest days of Mexican settlement and being supplemented by the more recent immigration of Cubans and others, constitutes the most obvious point of contact between Texas Catholic history and the newer historiographic currents of the 1960s and after. The Hispanic presence will become ever more important in the future of American Catholicism and of American society at large; yet we have only begun to recognize this fact and to take steps to overcome the effects of our earlier inattention to this feature of the

American and American Catholic past. Virgilio P. Elizondo's Mexican-American Cultural Center in San Antonio has done yeoman work since its establishment in 1972, especially in the pastoral field, and a number of excellent studies have been published in the general area of Chicano history. The specifically religious dimension of Hispanic history, however, has not yet received the attention it deserves. The Journal of Texas Catholic History and Culture is admirably fitted to explore this aspect of our common past.

For this reason, and for everything that it will do in other fields as well, the establishment of the journal is an auspicious event. All who are devoted to the study of American Catholicism hail its appearance and look to it for inspiration and assistance in our common task of searching, finding, and searching anew.

Notes

*. Philip Gleason is Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame and one of America's most distinguished Catholic historians. His most recent book is Keeping The Faith: American Catholicism Past and Present.

1. Both the passage from De Thinitate and Marrou's gloss on it appear in Henri Marrou, St. Augustine and his Influence through the Ages (New York: Harper Torchhook, 1957), 72.

2. Preceding these two by a few months was a short-lived society organised in Pittsburgh. For all of the societies discussed here, see John Paul Cadden, The Historiogiuphy of the American Catholic Church: 1785-1943 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1944[Arno Press reprint, 1978]), chap. 3.

3. In 1912, the Records absorbed the American Catholic Historical Researches, which, though launded by Fr. Andrew A. Lambing of the Pittsburgh group, had been published between 1886 and 1911 by Martin I. J. Griffin, who was one of the founders of the Philadelphia society.

4. Of particular interest in the present context are the issues for winter 1983, which is devoted to "Recent Catholic Historical Projects," and winter 1987, which is entitled "Reflections on Catholic Historiography."

5. Ireland, "Introduction," Acta et Dicta 1 (July 1907): 3.

6. For professionals and amateurs, see the early chapters of John Higham, History: Professional Scholarship in America, rev. paperback ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983). There are also interesting sidelights on the place of Catholics in the historical profession in Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The 'Objectivity Question' and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 69n, 174n, 203n, 366n.

7. For Guilday's activities, see Cadden, Historiography, 56-59, 98-105; John Tracy Ellis, "Peter Guilday: March 25, 1884-July 31, 1947," The Catholic Historical Review 33 (October 1947): 257-268; Francis J. Weber, "Peter Guilday: American Church Historian," American Ecclesiastical Review 147 (September 1962): 145-162; David J. O'Brien, "Peter Guilday: The Catholic Intellectual in the Post-Modern Church," in Nelson H. Minnich et al., eds., Studies in Catholic History in Honor of John Tracy Ellis (Wilmington, Del.: Michael Glazier, 1985), 260-306; and J. Thomas Douglas, "Interpretations of American Catholic History: A Comparative Analysis of Representative Catholic Historians, 1875-1975" (Ph.D. diss., Baylor University, 1976), which is summarized in Douglas, "A Century of American Catholic History," US. Catholic Historian 6 (Winter 1987): 25-49.

8. For comments by Guilday on the war, the loyalty issue, and Catholic participation, see CatholicHistorical Review 2 (April, October 1916): 113, 349-350; ibid. 3 (July 1917): 242-247; ibid, 7 (April 1921): 18. See also Philip Gleason, Keeping the Faith: American Catholicism Past and Present (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987), 106-12; and Leo Francis Stock, "Catholic Historical Activities in the United States:" The Fortnightly Review 35 (15 April, 1928): 151-153.

9. Sec Christopher J. Kauffman, Faith and Fraternalism: The History of the Knights of Columbus, 1882-1982 (New York: Harper, 1982), chap. 10.

10. Catholic historical societies were formed in this era in Indiana, Iowa, and Kansas, but only Iowa's accomplished much in the way of publication.

11. James J. Mahoney, "An Overview of Recent Catholic Historical Projects Formed in the United States," US. Catholic Historian 3 (Winter 1983): 1-6. The projects covered in this issue are the Cushwa

Center for the Study of American Catholicism at Notre Dame; the Vincentian Studies Institute; the New Jersey Catholic Historical Records Commission; the Archdiocesan Historical Commission of lonland, Oregon, and the reorganization of the Texas Catholic Historical Society.

12. Besides Cadden, Historiography, chap. 2, and Douglas, "Century" see Peter Guilday John Gilmary Shea: Father of American Catholic History. 1824-1892 (New York, 1926), and Henry Warner Bowden, "John Gilmary Shea: A Study of Method and Goals in Historiograply," The Catholic Historical Review 54 (July 1968): 235-260.

13. Bowden, "Shea," esp. 251-252.

14. Guilday, Shea, 151.

15. For Guilday's remarks on the biographical approach, see The Catholic Historical Review 5(April 1919); 120-22; ibid. 6 (April 1920): 121-27. For general studies of his work, see above note 7.

16. Guilday, The Life and Times of John Carroll, Archbishop of Baltimore (1735-1815), 2 vols. (New York: Encyclopedia Press, 1922); Guilday, The Life and Times of John England, First Bishop of Charleston (1786-1842) 2 vols. (New York: America Press, 1927). Guilday was also the ghost-writer of Cardinal Farley's biography of John McCloskey, the first American cardinal. Privately, Guilday averred that he had no gift for biography; his preference would have been simply to publish documents, and he used the biographies as a vehicle for publishing the full texts of many documents. See O'Brien, "Guilday," 269, 290-291.

17. John Tracy Ellis, The Life of James Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore, 1834-1921, 2 vols. (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1952); Marvin O'Connell, John Ireland and the American Catholic Church (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1988).

18. Both of these historians are discussed, and other studies cited, in Douglas, "Century" (see note 7 above). See also Philip Gleason, "Coming to Terms with American Catholic History," Societas 3 (Autumn 1973): 283-312, eap. 302ff.

19. The life of Hughes, which Guilday had begun, was completed by Henry J. Browne, who had studied under Ellis at the Catholic University. Unfortunately, Browne's life of Hughes was never published.

20. See Minnich et al, Studies in Catholic History, 674-724, for a complete listing (to 1985) of Ellis's publications; for discussion of the intellectualism essay, see Gleason, Keeping the Faith, 71ff.

21. The concept was given its classic formulation in 1945: see Louis Wirth, "The Problem of Minority Groups," in Ralph Linton, ed., The Science of Man in the World Crisis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1945). McAvoy's best-known article on this theme is "The Formation of the Catholic Minority in the United States, 1820-1860," Review of Politics 10 (January 1948): 13-34. For the other works mentioned in the text, see his "Americanism and Frontier Catholicism," ibid. 5 (July 1943), 275-301, and The Great Crisis in American Catholic History, 1895-1900 (Chicago: Regnery, 1957).

22. See Aaron I. Abell, American Catholicism and Social Action: A Search for Social Justice, 1865-1960 (Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1960). Daniel Callahan, The Mind of the Catholic Layman (New York: Sribners, 1963), xiii, credits McAvoy with doing more than anyone else to "open the door to American Catholic social history"

23. The effect of recent changes on historical thinking is a theme that runs through Gleason, Keeping the laith.

24. Jay P. Dolan, The American Catholic Experience: A History from Colonial Times to the Present (Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1985); James Hennesey, American Catholics: A History of the Roman Catholic Community in the United States (New York: Oxford, 1981).

25. The series, "Makers of the Catholic Community: Historical Studies of the Catholic People in America, 1789-1989," edited by Christopher S. Kauffman and published by Macmillan in 1988, includes the following volumes: Gerald P. Fogarty, ed., Patterns of Episcopal Leadership; David O'Brien, Public Catholicism; Joseph P. Chinnici, Living Stones: The History and Structure of Catholic Spiritual Life in the United States; Karen Kennelly, ed., American Catholic Women: A Historical Exploration; Dolores Liptak, Immigrants and Their Church; and Margaret Mary Reher, Catholic Intellectual Life in America: A History of Persons and Movements.

26. Morton Keller, Affairs of State: Public Life in Late Nineteenth Century America (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1977).

27. Dennis P. McCann, New Experiment in Democracy: The Challenge for American Catholicism (Kansas City, Mo.: Sheed and Ward, 1987); Joe Holland and Anne Barsanti, eds.,American and Catholic: The New Debate (South Orange, N.J.: Pillar, 1988); Pillar News, a newsletter put out by the Pallottine Institute for Lay Leadership and Apostolate Research at Seton Hall University, especially the issue for April 1987; and Charles A. Curran, "Being Catholic and Being American," Horizons 14 (Spring 1987): 50.

28. Saul E. Bronder, Social Justice and Church Authority: The Public Life of Archbishop Robert E. Lucey (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982); William Dunn, Saint Edward's University: A Centennial History (Austin: St. Edward's University Press, 1986).

29. For Catholic efforts at outreach in the 1930s, see John J. Gorrell, "Combatting Intolerance,"Commonweal 23 (17 January 1936), 323-324; and Anne B. McGill, "At the Texas Centennial," ibid. 24 (25 September 1936): 499-501.